Time Travel Series Continuum Hits Syfy This Week In Science Fiction

Whenever an actual science fiction series manages to sneak past all the “reality” crap and into Syfy’s prime-time line-up, I feel almost compelled to give it a shot on general principle. Thankfully, their new time-travel series Continuum, which premieres tonight, sounds like it’ll be worth more than just that one-time viewing. The Canadian series has aired its first season last summer up in the Great White North, and while a second season is scheduled to air this spring, now us folks down in the States can see what we’ve been missing.

Continuum stars Rachel Nichols a Kiera Cameron, a cop in the year 2077. After convicts from her time escape into the past, she pursues them back into 2012 to capture or kill them, and to prevent them from rewriting history. Although a little history-rewriting might not be such a bad thing: in the dystopian future of 2077, many governments have collapsed, leaving corporations to take over in the power vacuum. She lands a job on the Vancouver police department for her “cover” while she tracks the bad guys.

I’ve been a fan of Nichols since I saw her in Tim Minear’s short-lived crime series The Inside, so it’s very cool to see her landing a steady role (the last season of Alias doesn’t count). Fingers crossed that Continuum will do well for Syfy so we can see season 2 in the not-too-distant future.

Branded (Blu-Ray & DVD)
If you’re a longtime GFR reader, you might recall my semi-vicious rant about this movie not being remotely as advertised. If you still want to watch it anyway, now you can. With my sympathies.

Face Off (Syfy, 9/8c) — “Make It Reign”
It seems like this show just had its season finale (this past October, for the record), but it’s already kicking off a new one. Tonight’s premiere tasks the latest batch of competing makeup artists to create “goblin kings,” and included actor John Rhys-Davies (Gimli from The Lord of the Rings) as a guest judge.

“Shades of Earth: An Across the Universe Novel” by Beth RevisShades is the final book in Revis’ young adult SF trilogy which began in Across the Universe and continued in A Million Suns. I haven’t read any of her stuff, but the Amazon description sounds interesting:

Amy and Elder have finally left the oppressive walls of the spaceship Godspeed behind. They’re ready to start life afresh–to build a home–on Centauri-Earth, the planet that Amy has traveled 25 trillion miles across the universe to experience.

But this new Earth isn’t the paradise Amy had been hoping for. There are giant pterodactyl-like birds, purple flowers with mind-numbing toxins, and mysterious, unexplained ruins that hold more secrets than their stone walls first let on. The biggest secret of all? Godspeed’s former passengers aren’t alone on this planet. And if they’re going to stay, they’ll have to fight.

Amy and Elder must race to discover who–or what–else is out there if they are to have any hope of saving their struggling colony and building a future together. They will have to look inward to the very core of what makes them human on this, their most harrowing journey yet. Because if the colony collapses? Then everything they have sacrificed–friends, family, life on Earth–will have been for nothing.

American Horror Story (FX, 10/9c) — “Continuum”
I’m now convinced this show is being written using a lottery spinner and little slips of paper with various unrelated genre concepts on them. “Alien babies” “Bingo!”

Saga #9 (Image Comics)
Bryan K. Vaughn’s delightfully twisted space opera is back with a new issue in which “The Will finally has a good day.”

Deadliest Space Weather (Weather Channel, 9/8c) — “Meteors”
Do meteors qualify as weather? I’m not sure they do. Although that would make the weather reports more interesting. “Partly cloudy through Friday, then moving into a 75% of rocks falling from the sky later that evening.”

Fringe (Fox, 8/7c) — “Liberty/An Enemy of Fate”
Here it is: the final episodes of Fringe. This show was one of the best surprises in recent memory. I almost bailed when the pilot failed to impress me, but I’m very glad I stuck with it. So long, Walter, Peter, Olivia, and the rest. To borrow the final words of a well-known Starfleet captain. “It’s been…fun.”

An Idiot Abroad (Science, 9/8c)
Hands-down one of the funniest shows I’ve ever seen, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant return for a third season of sending sad-sack Karl Pilkington around the world to places he really, really doesn’t want to go. First up: Venice, Italy…and Warwick Davis is along for the ride as well.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Cartoon Network, 9:30 am/8:30c) — “Eminence”
“Savage and Maul form an alliance with the Death Watch to take down Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

Tasmanian Devils (Syfy, 9/8c)Oh sure, I could give you the details about Syfy’s latest Saturday-night schlockfest, but I think we’d all rather watch this instead.